The sixth house speaks to work and health and a list of topics connected to these themes. It also tells us something about nutrition and our attitude to food, about self-improvement, about the way we serve others and the way we treat the animals in our care.
In my inventory I will first focus on my work environments and then I’ll look at my health. Once I have described these aspects of my life as objectively as possible, I will explore what I would like to let go or see less of and what I would like to keep or invite more of.
One thing to note, is that there is a separate house which speaks to our career and our public roles: the tenth. So those topics will follow later in the year. In the sixth house inventory we are specifically looking at the job(s) we have, the tools we have to do them, our work habits, our colleagues, our work environment and they way this is set up.
As I mentioned in my first inventory for this blog: I am self-employed. I am not on the pay roll anywhere at the moment, but there are various organisations, mostly in the arts, I do long term projects for. These are projects I have taken on alongside my coaching practice.
I would like to start by looking at the work environments that I am part of at the moment. Even as a freelancer, I do have colleagues and to a certain degree I am part of the organisational structure. I have written before about my sensitivity and hyper alertness; the latter is a temporary state which, thankfully, I am healing. The first is simply part of who I am; atmosphere in places and the way people interact always has an effect on how I feel. I cannot not notice them.
Some of my present work environments feel lighter than others. I would like to take this opportunity to explore these differences and – in the next steps – see what changes are required to experience more ease.
Work environment A is a very large educational organisation where I teach one module to the first year students. After some bureaucratic hassle at the start, I now have all the information and tools I need to do my work as well as I can. The impression I get, is that the organisation is doing its best to look after both its employers and its students and it is generally a good place to be. The contact I have with co-workers is limited: I go there, I teach, I leave. Not socialising or getting to know more colleagues is a deliberate choice; I need these boundaries right now. Not because the environment feels off, but simply because I have many different projects to tend to at the moment and don’t have much time for socialising. Also, I am still working through some difficult issues in therapy. Those issues sometimes leave me feeling a little fragile and insecure, not really up for meeting new people. What I very much appreciate about this work place, is the fact that I do not have to mingle or take part in meetings. I have a lot of autonomy and they trust that I am doing a good job. Which, I am fairly confident, I am.
Work environment B is a smaller, but still rather large cultural organisation where I am co-curator of an event, or rather a play, with music, poetry and film. I am very grateful for the opportunity to create this magical program and hope more projects will follow in the future. Here too, there is trust and autonomy. And even more: there is space to create. I have been working for this organisation for a while, and am more part of the team here, but still an outsider who does not have to attend meetings or take part in social gatherings unless I want to. At the moment this suits me very well for all the reasons I described above. I am actually glad to be able to keep my distance and have little to do with the inevitable office politics and challenging interpersonal dynamics. From the sideline I do notice that those are at play, but on the whole I see, and have experienced, that this too is an organisation that looks after its employers as best as they can. No remarks and certainly no complaints about the tools at my disposal, the organisation or my colleagues. Out of all six organisations in this inventory, this is the one I am most eager to keep working with in the future.
Work environment C is much smaller. Unlike A and B it is not based in a large city, but in a little town. They are a cultural organisation offering different types of creative courses to children and adults (music, theatre and visual arts). My role is to review their external communication and offer advice on how to improve it. I have yet to find out what the atmosphere is like there.
Work environment D is a similar organisation to C, based in a small city close to the little town. It has been run by the same person for a long time. She is someone who has dedicated her life to supporting the arts, not only at that centre but in the entire town. I much admire her idealism and dedication. She’s very well read and incredibly intelligent, which makes her an inspiring person to work with. Some time ago, she asked me and another freelancer to help set up a platform for people in the local creative industries. There is a little funding for about one year which means we can invoice for some of the time we dedicate to the project. We are given a lot of space, trust and autonomy, which I very much appreciate. And the director looks after us well, is very thoughtful and generous.
As the coordinators of the platform, we organise sessions where people can meet other creatives, share ideas and experience. Our purpose is to connect artists, makers, creative entrepreneurs and organisations with each other, as well as with new audiences and local governments. The other freelancer happens to be one of my dearest friends and is as inspiring as the director. Having these two ladies as co-workers is what brings joy to this project. However, building the platform requires patience. Most people are less inclined to dedicate time and energy to the organisational side of it than I was hoping they would be. I am generally a very patient person, but for some reason I really struggle here.
The director, my friend and I have already discussed ways to engage the other participants and agreed to focus our attention on involving them in the next few months. I hope this will result in others stepping forward and taking on more responsibility. I have already decided not to stay on once my one year agreement ends, whether there is a potential new coordinator or not. I am not someone to leave without knowing who will take my place, but this time I feel very strongly that it would be counterproductive for me to stay. I have other priorities to tend to in my career and private life.
Work environment E, based in the same town as environment C, is a small cultural organisation, run by volunteers who are, in most cases, much older than I am. I have revised their communication and stayed on to implement the suggested changes. First this was paid, but now I am volunteering, just like the others. They are a really lovely group of people. Many of them have just retired and it has been such a joy to see them rise to the challenge, step up the pace and really grow. In a relatively short amount of time they have taken some major steps. There is little more I can teach them about communication now. They have been very generous, gracious and thankful. All this has made organisation E one of my most favourite work environments in the past year. This too is a place where I am given a lot of trust, space and autonomy. I can take the lead when and where this is appropriate in a way that feels relaxed and natural. Yet it feels like the time is coming for me to move on. Over the next few months, I will be delegating my responsibilities to new team members. Ideally, I would like to leave by October or November. I have done what I am best at, and trust that the others can easily keep up their good work. This feels very different from leaving the platform, which is still new and actually needs more time to develop. In the case of work environment E, my departure will not be a problem. If anything, it will help the new team members grow.
Work environment F is based in the same city as work environment D. Strictly speaking, they are no clients or employers. They are a collective of artists who share an old school building. I have my studio in one of the former class rooms and, like all the other creative entrepreneurs there, take part in running the place.
The organisation started off in another school building, guarding it against squatters. Over the years they have become a permanent feature in the regional creative scene, providing high quality arts education and participating in all sorts of theatre productions and festivals. Their housing was not permanent though, and this put a lot of pressure on the collective. When I joined them, they had just moved to the present building. We negotiated a two year lease, which allowed for some time to revise the organisational structure. Because I already had experience with creating a healthy structure in similar spaces, I stepped forward to assist in this process.
An external board was installed to take some of the pressure off the individual members of the collective. At the same time, one of my colleagues and I secured funding for a neighbourhood project. These changes were not welcomed by everyone. There has been, and still is, resistance from a number of people within the collective.
This is not uncommon in times of transition and transformation. I often see it in my team coaching and I do understand why people can react like this. The problem is though, that as a member of the collective, I am not in a position to guide my colleagues through their resistance. They have not asked me to, neither was I given that role: I am not their employer, not their coach and I am not their friend. Sadly, they are not willing to discuss the tension and take responsibility for their part in it.
Thankfully, something is slowly shifting. As part of restructuring the organisation, tasks have been redistributed. More people in the group are taking responsibility for the project as well as for the organisation as a whole now. It remains to be seen if this will tip the balance. The people in ‘resistance-mode’ can be rather strong in their communication and presence. From what I gather, this has led to tension before. As a result, part of the group has developed the habit of looking away and falling quiet whenever there is a disagreement. They don’t speak up, don’t try to work it out. The atmosphere remains tense.
The situation is not unlike work environment D where very few people are really committed. They do put time and energy towards the ‘common cause’ but they don’t fully identify with the organisation. On paper they are as important and responsible as any other person in the collective, but in reality they do not (or no longer) feel that what they do or what they say matters. This obviously impacts the way they show up.
All of this will not change overnight. But even if they begin to experience that they too are the collective, that they matter, the work environment is unlikely to change enough for me to settle in. The others need time to take in information, weigh options, decide, plan and take action. That is neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but it is something which affects the degree to which I myself experience a sense of belonging, feel safe and at ease.
Of all places, the studio in which I write, paint and draw is where I really want to feel safe and at ease. If circumstances I have so little influence on make it too hard for me to really feel at home in this work environment, then the best thing for me to do, might be to leave.
PS: tensions at work environment F this week have shed some light on why certain behaviour triggers such a strong reaction in me that I start thinking about leaving.
I find it very hard when someone in the work environment is extremely tense, when they brace themselves and are afraid to make mistakes, afraid to be criticised, to not be in control of what is happening around them, to not be in control of the emotions that are raging within them.
I find it hard when one of my colleagues is unable to take responsibility for their own inner turmoil and when they leave it up to others to deal with the turmoil. This may show up as them being controlling or even by being unkind to others, or it may be them positioning themselves as a helpless victim, despite this not being the case.
What it looks like to me, is that their energetic negativity is transferred to others. I often struggle then. I find it really hard to ignore such energies.
The reason I find this difficult, is because on a subconscious level, certain memories resonate; as a child I was confronted with emotional tension too, but was unaware of it and, simply put, it got stuck.
I would soak it all up, but did not process it. First of all, I was too young to put things in perspective and understand that I could still be safe and alright even though someone close to me was clearly not feeling that way. Also, I had no idea what it meant to be this sensitive and have such fine wiring. I wasn’t aware of other people’s moods and energies ending up in my system. But they did and now that I am more aware of what happened, it feels invasive and painful.
These days, whenever I have to work with someone who is very tense and who shows no self-accountability, an alarm goes off. Part of me feels frightened and either freezes, wants to flee or it tries to fight it by rationalising it all away and explaining why the other person cannot help it and doesn’t mean it like that.
There is also a part that feels angry and wronged, that knows boundaries are being crossed and wants the other party to back-off and apologise. This is a relatively new part. And even though it helps me stand up for myself, this doesn’t always make a difference; I have, in recent years, left working environments because another person was not going to take responsibility for their emotional turmoil anytime soon and I could no longer be around them.
I am aware this might sound rather dramatic, but my reaction in such situations is very much the default reaction of a child that cannot fend for themselves yet: she feels frightened. Hence the fight, flight, freeze response kicking in. My therapist and I are looking into this and we will try to get to the root of this reaction, to the moments when it all got stuck in my system so to speak. If I can go back to those moments and bring my adult self to the situation, the grown up who does know that she will be alright, then we can take away the anxiety and the fear and I will be much more calm and free in the present when I encounter such tense and controlling people. I will be able to witness them, without absorbing any tension, so to speak.
My rising sign 